From the desk of Richard A. Urbanek, JR., DDS, MS, PA
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery is the medical and surgical specialty of dentistry. Residency programs are 4-6 years of intense training after dental school. Anesthesia and medicine are big parts of this training. Upwards of 12 months are spent on medical services as we function as primary care, anesthesiology, plastic/neuro/general surgery, and emergency medicine residents.
Stresses across the board are higher now because of the Coronavirus. Both physical and psychological stress weakens the body.
Examples of 3D Studies
LaunchPad Medical in, conjunction with Stryker, has just gotten approval for use of its resorbable bone glue-Tetranite.
Do you trust your doctor? I hope so. In today’s world of mass production and socialized medicine, sometimes I feel like a number when I go to a medical appointment.
You may see advertisements on TV now about how someone walks in with a bunch of bad teeth and comes out with new, fixed teeth on implants. This is indeed possible. But, it is not as easy as it looks.
Dental implants are not a cure all. They are titanium (non-magnetic, don’t set off metal detectors and MRI scans are OK) and don’t decay, never need root canals, and are hard to break, unlike teeth.
TMJ (temporomandibular joint) is a widely used term that is applied to disorders associated with this system. We have not figured out how to correct all the problems, so we just changed the name to TMD (temporomandibular disorders).
Until we knew better, no one realized how brutal a tooth extraction was. Unless a tooth came out directly or you had massive pain to begin with, the treatment was worse than the problem.
Dry socket is a term that is often misapplied to pain after a tooth extraction. This is a rare condition; an extraction site completely devoid of clot-scab equivalent on dry skin.
A light bulb went off in my head several years ago. Every other patient I see my age, has spent their whole life in a dental chair with a continuum of treatments.
The old joke about dental implants is, you need bone and money. Bone can be created. Money is usually earned.
Everyone knows the more you do something, the better you get-hopefully. Along with this come advances in technology. The combination of these makes for better outcomes.
